


True North

by romanticalgirl



Category: Elfquest
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 12:39:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Show me the way home</p>
            </blockquote>





	True North

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://shatterpath.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://shatterpath.livejournal.com/)**shatterpath** for yuletide 2006
> 
> Originally posted 1-1-07

The stars are with him wherever he goes, so Skywise always feels some sense of home. Though they shift and turn and seem different, with a tilt of his head or a shift of seasons, he sees the same arcs and curves that lived with him forever in the shade of the trees of the Holt. For all that has changed, Sorrow's End is not so different. There is still night and still stars.

But there is also something more. Something restless that beats inside his breast. He holds the lodestone at night, watching it spin and turn and always end up pointing the same direction, never wavering in its course. He thinks about Cutter and Leetah and the rest, how they all are searching for something while all he can manage is to wonder what it is he's found.

He watches the others with the familiar feelings of tribe and family. They are one and the same to him, the borders expanding and stretching to include the newfound elves of Sorrow's End. He has known since the beginning that they belong, though he claims no great sight or talents. He simply knows and trusts, not wary like Strongbow or pragmatic like Cutter. The feeling is there, and he accepts it, grounding him on the dirt as he turns his eyes up to the sky.

He stares at the caves where he knows Leetah and Cutter are and sighs, closing his eyes for a moment and feeling the night around him. He and Cutter have been friends for Cutter's lifetime, and for all his dreaming, Skywise is practical enough to know that as much as they are brothers, Leetah owns Cutter's name now, he is her Tam, and Skywise is not fool enough to even try to interfere.

"Are you lost, Wolfrider?" Shenshen is full of mischief and amusement, sinking down on the grass beside him. She curls her legs under her skirt, the slits up the sides providing little warmth, though the night needs none. "Not sleeping in your cave with the rest of your pack?"

"Not tonight, little sunbeam." He tilts his head back up to the sky. "Not sleeping at all tonight."

"I thought you needed your rest." She leans into him, sliding a finger over the curve of his arm, enough pressure to sense the corded muscle beneath the skin. "For the hunt."

He turns his gaze to her; silver hair falling around his face, shading his eyes from the moon and her seeking look. "What am I hunting?"

"My hunting abilities extend solely to gathering fruits, herbs and flowers for Leetah. I'm sure I don't know what you seek." She stretches her legs out, flexing her feet so that the skirt falls away to show a long stretch of dark, supple skin. "Cutter is your friend?"

"My brother in all but blood. My Chief." He shrugs, uncertain he knows the right words to say what Cutter is to him, what he _means_. "He is...Cutter." _Tam_ , his head and heart remind him, though the name sounds foreign now, spoken with the warm tones of Leetah's voice instead of the silver of his own.

Shenshen brings her knees up to her chin and frowns slightly, the expression so strange on her usually bright face that he cannot help but laugh. Her eyes narrow suspiciously at him. "What's so funny?"

"You look so different with such a scowl." He taps the space between her eyes, sending her cross-eyed for a moment before she giggles softly. "Better with a smile."

"He's going to take Leetah away from us, you know. He's not content here in the sun and open air."

"Is that what you see?" He plucks a blade of grass and holds it against his lips before taking it between his teeth, tasting sun sweet juice against his tongue. He shakes his head. "Cutter may still hear the trees, may still hear the cool wind and air, but his heart is here now. He will not leave his heart."

"His heart will not leave him." Shenshen frowns again and then stops at his quick glance, offering him a smile of apology. "Leetah will go where Cutter goes. My father and Savah say it is the way of things." She picks a blade of her own, pressing it to her lips and loosing a shrill whistle. Starjumper stands on a distant rock, his sharp eyes peering into the darkness at the call. "You will go where he goes."

"Is that the way of things as well?"

"You have nothing holding you here, and everything holding you to him." She shrugs and lays back on the grass, one hand beneath her hair and the other across her bare midriff. Skywise watches and then lies beside her. "But here, you can see the sky forever. Every star hanging in the sky so close it's as if you can reach up." She does, her fingers tracing the outline of brilliance in the air. "Reach up and almost touch them."

"You can't touch the stars."

She turns and touches the lodestone around his neck. "You've touched one. You wear a star."

"And what would you do with a star, sunbeam? If you touched one?"

She strokes the stone around his neck, fingers falling off to brush his pale, bare skin. "Make a wish, perhaps. Dream." She shakes her head and leans in, brushing the ghost of a kiss across his lips. "What do you do?"

"Nothing more. And nothing less." He watches as she gets to her feet, padding silently into the shadows toward the hut she shares with her father. He watches until she is one with the night, only illuminated again as she brushes the door covering aside and transforms from shadow to shape for an instant before the curtain falls and hides her again.

He sighs softly and glances back at the sky, his fingers playing over the stone as reverently as Shenshen's had. He smiles and closes his eyes, the map of the stars above him etched somewhere in his mind, in his heart where they never fade. He is not certain he has a home, one that's tangible and formed. Instead, his home lies in the people he loves and the way their world moves, offering him new visions every night as the stars dance in the light of two moons.


End file.
